Prioritizing Caring over Corporate Gains: Focus on Essential Life Services
The medicine shortage in Germany and across Europe has become a pressing concern, with over 550 essential medicines, including cancer drugs, insulin, and antibiotics, in short supply. The unpredictability of when a medicine will become scarce remains a mystery, and quick and simple solutions are hard to come by.
The real solution to this crisis, according to the European Union, lies in a joint EU strategy to build production facilities for medicines on the continent and enhance crisis preparedness. This strategy, part of the Preparedness Union Strategy, was adopted in March 2025.
The strategy focuses on several key elements:
- Establishing EU-wide stockpiles of essential medical goods, combining centralized EU reserves with contributions from Member States, supported by public-private partnerships.
- Improving production capacity on the continent to ensure strategic autonomy and reduce dependency on external suppliers.
- Doubling investments in Health Emergency Preparedness and Response (HERA), increasing funding to €200 million by 2027.
- Launching the Medical Countermeasures Accelerator, a one-stop shop facilitating company access to financing for medical technology development.
- Focusing on advanced research and innovation in medical countermeasures, including platform approaches to treat chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats.
These actions aim to build and strengthen production and supply chains for medicines and critical health products in Europe, making the continent more self-reliant and better prepared for current and future medicine shortages. The strategy also dovetails with enhanced civil-military cooperation and whole-of-society preparedness efforts for comprehensive health security within the EU.
While details about constructing new physical manufacturing facilities are not yet available, the emphasis on boosting production implies investments and incentives to scale European manufacturing capacity in medical supplies and medicines as part of the overall preparedness and resilience framework.
The medicine shortage has eroded patients' trust in the healthcare system, and problems at one manufacturing company can lead to months of shortages. Doctors are forced to change therapies, and the current supply chain is vulnerable to various events such as wars, strikes, factory accidents, delivery problems with raw materials, packaging materials, or machine parts.
Europe cannot continue to rely on the whims of the market for the supply of vital medicines. The EU Commission has proposed a strategy to address the medicine shortage, and Germany must support it. Building production facilities and creating new supply chains for medicines is a time-consuming process, but it is essential for ensuring the long-term security of the medicine supply in Europe.
[1] European Commission. (2025). Preparedness Union Strategy. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/preparedness-union_en [2] European Commission. (2025). Medical Countermeasures Strategy. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/preparedness-union_en [3] European Commission. (2025). HERA Initiative. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/preparedness-union_en
- In an attempt to address the pressing issue of medicine shortages, such as those affecting cancer treatments, the European Commission has proposed a strategy that includes boosting production capacities for essential medicines within Europe, reducing medical-conditions-related vulnerabilities.
- As part of their response to the current medicine shortage crisis, the European Commission is focusing on science-based solutions, aiming to dovetail advancements in health-and-wellness research with the development of new production facilities and improved supply chains to combat future cancer and other medical-conditions-related challenges.
